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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
Have you ever been vulnerable at work and had it backfire? For context, vulnerability is about doing or saying something at work that can potentially be used against you. It’s essentially exposing a gap that you have.
Perhaps you admitted to a mistake, shared a personal struggle, or confessed to not knowing how to do something – just to have that vulnerability used against you in some way. It turns out this happens quite a lot and I believe during the course of a typical career it WILL happen at least once.
A few months ago I did an informal poll on LinkedIn with over 1,000 people. 85% of respondents said they had vulnerability used against them at some point in their careers.
In my latest book, Leading With Vulnerability, I surveyed nearly 14,000 employees in partnership with DDI. In that survey, 73% of participants said they were vulnerable at work and had it backfire.
Today I’m going to share the story of one of the CEOs I interviewed and what this CEO learned. In an upcoming post I’m going to give you a structured framework that will walk you through what you should do if you’re vulnerable at work and it backfires.
That post will only be available for subscribers as well so make sure you sign up to get that post here.
One CEO of a large telecommunications company shared a story with me about how her vulnerability was used in an attempt to destroy her career. This CEO asked to remain anonymous so let’s call him Bob.
Here’s Bob’s story…
Bob was a senior executive but he never went to college and didn’t go down the traditional career track like the CEO at Bob’s company did. Bob had a lot of insecurities and struggled with confidence but Bob was very driven, something that manifested after Bob’s father died since he instilled a work ethic based on accomplishment. He was hired as an external leader whereas everyone else was hired internally. Bob felt a bit like an outsider in his role and he shared these insecurities with his CEO.
The CEO of this company saw Bob’s vulnerability as a weapon. One day after coming back from vacation Bob saw that his office which used to be next door to the CEO was now moved down the hall without his approval or notice into a much smaller space. Bob started to get ridiculed during meetings by the CEO, and members of Bob’s team were getting offered jobs in other departments without Bob’s input or knowledge.
Bob was later assigned an executive coach who Bob confided in, only to find out that the executive coach was hired by the CEO and was reporting everything that Bob was saying back to the CEO! Finally the CEO then told Bob he was supposed to go on a performance improvement plan and Bob finally quit. Today Bob is the CEO if a 20,000 person telecommunications company.
As Bob told me:
It was a huge mess and I lost a lot of my self-confidence, it really affected me psychologically, it was psychological bullying. She knew that confidence was something I was trying to work on and she used that vulnerability against me. Work was my escape when my father passed away, achievement has been a big part of me and so I never spoke up because I was terrified of getting fired and failing.”
For most people, when something like this happens they use as a way to justify why they should never be vulnerable again…a bad idea. Think about a time when you were turned down for a date, were told no about getting promoted, or were rejected from a job. Did you stop asking people out on dates? Did you stop trying to get promoted? Did you stop applying for jobs? No.
I asked Bob if this experience deterred him from ever being vulnerable again, his response is a powerful lesson for all leaders.
This was a powerful learning moment for me. I learned that as you go into new environments, teams, and organizations, you have to really understand who you are going to be working with. You have to understand the values of the people you are going to be working with, the values of the company, and the culture that exists. Do your due diligence. I realized that I only want to align myself with people and companies that have a purpose, values, and culture, that align with my approach to life which is to be open, honest, transparent, and willing to be vulnerable.”
I can promise you that at some point in your career, vulnerability will be used against you. Knowing what to do is going to be crucial and that is what I will be exploring in my next post. In the meantime, do you have a story/experience of vulnerability being used against you at work? If so, please share below!
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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
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